23 June 2008

8% Godless

About 8% of people surveyed don't believe in God according to a Pew Survey of 36,000 people in 2007. Those numbers aren't huge, but are far more than the 1-2% answering that way in many other surveys.

While 92 percent of Americans believe in the existence of God or a universal spirit, only about 70 percent say they are "absolutely certain."

Almost two-thirds of the faithful take the view that their religion's sacred texts are the word of God. That group is almost evenly divided between those who think the text should be interpreted literally and those who don't. . . .

"[I]n the United States today is that people who regularly attend worship services and hold traditional religious views are much more likely to hold conservative political views," . . . For example, about 73 percent of Evangelical Christians who attend church at least once a week say abortion should be illegal, compared with 45 percent of Evangelicals who attend less often.

This implies, of course, that a third of the faithful don't believe that their religion's sacred texts are the word of God, and that Evangelicals who attend church infrequently are comparably liberal to mainline Christians who attend church frequently.